South Africa embodies a maelstrom of different identities and narratives: disparate yet interconnected, divided and liberated, a nostalgia that celebrates and mourns. Through archival photographs and experimental mediums, Cape Town-based artists Zenaéca Singh and Alka Dass are exploring South African Indian history, uncovering sentiments of identity, migration and belonging. Singh is currently completing an MFA at Michaelis School of Fine Art while Dass studied at Durban University of Technology and recently opened a solo at Church Projects. As a media partner for Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF), we got the opportunity to sit down with these two participating artists to delve into the intersections of their practices and how they document their heritage in contemporary ways.

Nataal: Can you tell us more about the works you presented at this year’s ICTAF?

Zenaéca Singh: I presented an expansion of my sugar paste paintings of family photos from 2022, this time using molasses. Molasses is bittersweet, which speaks to the violent history of indentured South African Indians in the late 1800s – but also ‘sweet’ in the sense of being able to confront this history, create awareness and spark a broader conversation around it.

Alka Dass: I’ve been working with cyanotypes for three years now and family photographs for a little longer. I’ve been doing research into vernacular photography, especially in the houses of people of colour and how photography is curated on a wall. You have to see it in someone’s home as it’s never really displayed elsewhere. I aimed to capture that essence from a place of sentiment, love and personal history.

Nataal: How does your identity and heritage influence your choice of mediums?

ZS: Not many people know about the history of indentureship and why Indians came to South Africa. I’ve also always been interested in what it means to be a born-free, South African Indian woman. These questions of belonging and freedom prompted my research into how violent indenture was. Working with sugar in different states of solidity and fluidity is a homage to these labourers who worked on sugarcane farms.

AD: My mom and my grandmother inspired me to work with textiles and beading. My grandmother was the seamstress of the family, constantly beading bridalwear for cousins and sisters. Traditionally, that’s considered a feminine, crafty technique purely based on who it’s done by, depending on their race and gender. This kind of artwork is often disregarded and not considered serious art because of this. My artwork subverts that longstanding narrative.

Nataal: Was there a particular moment that inspired the themes explored in your work?

AD: The inspirations have always been there. It was an issue of whether I was going to confront it or not. There’s a sense of ancestral trauma that never really leaves. I was raised in my grandmother’s home, so I was constantly told stories of when things happened or when someone did something, and that lives in my memory, resurfacing now and then. The realm of art-making is something tricky but how you decide to depict that through art is up to the artist.

ZS: I agree with Alka, it’s about confronting your reasons for making art. There wasn’t a specific moment but rather something that evolved more and more as I got older. Art is a way to process the questions that I had about my history and I see it as a visual language to talk about these histories in a more imaginative and relatable way.

Nataal: South African-Indian history is lesser seen in art. Why do you think that is?

AD: It’s not down to a lack of passion for creating art. In India, there is so much craftsmanship and everything is done with the intent of being aesthetically pleasing. If I had to attribute it to something, I would say it’s mainly down to generational family pressures that encourage ‘stable’ jobs. In South African Indian households art is still not seen as a conventional way to make a living.

ZS: My dad wanted me to be a dentist and my uncles wanted me to be an engineer. So, art wasn’t even a consideration as a legitimate career in my family. Art is very unconventional in most Indian communities, especially in South Africa where more prosaic jobs are expected of you. That being said, especially with newer generations, Indian South Africans are slowly getting into the art scene and it is growing substantially.

Nataal: Both of your works have a slightly distorted or blurred aspect. What does that symbolise?

ZS: I paint with molasses, so no matter how much detail I can add in, the molasses does its own thing, which is actually pretty interesting – it almost naturally blurs the figures. Also, it’s personal, I’m often working with family images and can’t always get the consent of everyone I’m painting. So I choose not to paint the figures as a matter of ethics and to give some privacy to the family. This makes the paintings relatable – viewers can weave their own memories into them. I embraced the blurriness.

AD: Zen said it best – it’s about ethics. Although there’s also a sense of having that creative license. The fading in two of my artworks is because I rely quite heavily on sunlight for the images to transfer. One of the days during the process was a bit cloudy and didn’t transfer but I kept working on it and ended up liking the fadedness of it. It has this hazy, dreamscape feeling that has a lot to do with fragmented memory, which adds to themes of remembrance, nostalgia and belonging.